Shifting Breast Cancer Research

With billions of dollars raised and scientific advances made in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, it's hard not to wonder how we still know very little about what causes this disease or how to prevent it. There's certainly no shortage of awareness in the month of October (hello pink NFL uniforms!).

But one expert is trying to shift the conversation from early detection and treatment to prevention and eradication: "Determining the cause of breast cancer is not just going to take more research, it's going to take a different type of research," says Susan Love, MD, president of the Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation.

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"Using animal models to understand breast cancer is not enough. We need more studies on real women in order to understand the cause of this disease," she says. "To discover the cause and prevent the development of breast cancer, researchers need to look at normal healthy women as well—those are going to be the women with the answers!"

Dr. Love launched the Army of Women—an initiative that connects breast cancer researchers with real women who are willing to participate in wide variety of research studies—in 2008 to provide all women with an opportunity to help research. To date, the Army of Women has recruited more than 360,000 women with 55,000 participating in 54 breast cancer studies.

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So, who qualifies? Any woman! "We need all types of women. Women of all ages, ethnicities, survivors and those who have never had breast cancer. We need to represent everybody that might get breast cancer," says Dr. Love.